Identical
by Greensl33ves
Summary: Fred and George have always been identical. Now they always will be.


**Author:** Greensl33ves

 **Summery:** Fred and George have always been identical. Now they always will be.

 **Rating:** K+

 **Disclaimer:** HP et al aren't mine.

 **Cover:** Mine

* * *

 **Identical**

I stared at my twin, my George.

"How're you feeling?"

He reached up, gingerly exploring the gap on the left side of his head where a week ago his ear had perched. "Holey," he said.

"Saint-like's a definite, then?" I asked. This was the first time he had said anything about what had happened since that night.

George smiled ruefully. "It's funny, I was kidding then, but it's true. I feel like a bloody martyr or something."

"Does it hurt?" I watched him carefully to see if he would lie.

He shrugged, still fingering his head. "No. It doesn't feel like anything. It's just…gone."

I nodded and glanced out the window. We were in our little flat above our shop, worn out after a long day of work. Being around people was too strange; for once I didn't have a hundred voices calling me "George."

For the first time in my life, I had stopped responding to his name because it was never applied to me.

"Do you miss it?"

"Eh, old lefty'll always be missed, but really, it's not that different. Just gotta keep my hair short now. I can't exactly tuck it back, can I?"

I smiled a little. "Want me to keep growing mine? We really could stop being identical, you know. For good."

"No!"

His response was so fast, so vehement, that I glanced over in alarm. His face was whiter than parchment, a fierce look in his eyes.

"It was only a suggestion, George." I reached out a hand and took one of his. "Only a suggestion."

Our flat was silent again but for the rain pattering on the window and the roof. Then George said, in a low, hesitant voice, "Do you really want to be different, Fred?"

I swallowed and tried to keep my voice level, "No, not really. Choice was taken out of our hands, though, wasn't it?"

"Was it," he echoed. It wasn't a question. "D'you…d'you miss it? Being identical?"

I looked over at him again, allowing myself to study the place his ear had been. "Yes. I do." It was too much, and I examined our clasped hands instead. "I really do. I miss…being you, George."

"I miss being you too, Fred."

"You know," I ventured, "we never really were identical."

George chuckled a bit. "No, you're right. Still have it?"

"Of course!" I pulled up the hem of my t-shirt a bit and pointed to the tiny freckle resting in a patch of white on my hipbone. "And you're still missing it, right?"

"Sorry, 'fraid that's true." George pulled up his hem to reveal the same patch of skin, his freckle-less. "Remember when we found that?"

I let go of my t-shirt, covering the spot again. "Course I do. Summer before second year, lying on the roof of the house to escape de-gnoming the garden again."

George smiled a little wistfully. "Nothing to do but escape Mum and try to find if we were different."

"Which, really, we aren't."

"Weren't."

The word hung in the air and I closed my eyes, wishing it all away. When I opened them it was to find George watching me closely, gaping hole still so wrong.

"Weren't," I finally echoed, and the silence after this word was even thicker.

George, though, somewhere else in his mind, didn't notice. "Hey, do you remember that year we traded places, and you were George and I was Fred?"

"I think I recall such a thing."

"Did we ever really remember to switch back?"

The rain drummed harder on the window, going from a shower to a storm. "I think so."

"Did we? Because the other day I found an old note, from George to Fred—not Fred to George, like it should be—saying, 'Don't tell anyone that we're different! It's our secret.'"

I looked over at him, startled. "You did?"

"Yes. It's in the drawer, right there—yes, under that letter from Mum."

I fished it out and stared down at the old, yellowed parchment that had our craggy scrawl across it.

 _Fred-_

 _Don't tell anyone about my freckle! It's our secret. No one need ever know, alright? We can be the same, forever._

 _-George_

There wasn't a date on it, but I'd bet anything that note was from when Mum found us and sent me to Auntie Muriel's as a week as punishment to us both. She sent me, Fred. Or did she? Did she send George, and I just went anyway? Or did she send Fred, and I defied her, or did I go by the correct name, or…

"Fred, what if we're stuck with the wrong name forever?"

"But—"

His shoulders twitched in panic. "What if I really am Fred, and you're George, and no one will ever know it? I can't be George, I can't be just this one name. What if it isn't mine? What if I'm not really George, and never have been? Even owls can't tell us apart! Nor our mother, our friends, our family—no one! _What if not even we can?_ "

"But it doesn't matter, we're iden—"

The word stuck in my throat and I stared over at my twin in horror. He was right. The gaping enormity of what he had just said hit me.

"What if," he whispered, "we never find out who we really are?"

We stared at each other for what seemed like ages, looking at ourselves, only backwards, and now so horribly wrong. I reached up a finger and traced the freckles down his nose and he did the same to mine. I couldn't do it on my own nose; to do that would be backwards.

See, when people think of twins, they think of mirror images, but really we're not. When I look at George, I see the opposite of my reflection, with all the freckles backwards and the mole on the wrong side of the face and the belt buckle completely mixed up. George has never been my reflection; he has always been my copy, or perhaps I am his. We are identical.

Were. Were identical.

In that moment, I felt so alone as my fingers slipped across his face to feel the scar tissue where his ear used to be. Just a week ago; just a life ago.

I closed my eyes, unable to look at him any longer. My throat hurt and there was a roaring in my ears, a dim sense of danger and that something wasn't right. I had felt it for a week and it was eroding at my sleep, making me jittery, agitated. How could I bear a lifetime?

We'd always been the same, identical, copies, indistinguishable from one another. Now anyone could know our secret at a glance. I felt naked, our protective barrier stripped away until we were left standing alone, bared to a world that didn't care how we felt, what we needed. And if I felt like this, how would he feel? He was the one who'd actually lost a body part.

His voice startled me. "I feel so guilty, Fred…"

I looked up to see that George's face was blotchy, as though he was trying not to cry, and I've had bet anything that mine was too. "Why?"

"This is my fault. If I had ducked…"

"No! This isn't your fault."

"I was too slow! I should have been faster, should have seen it—"

"Stop it!"

"—maybe there would have been a way—"

"—there wasn't—"

"—there might have been—"

"—how could there have—"

"—I was too slow—"

"—no one could have—"

"—I deserved it—"

I grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. "No you didn't!"

He stared back at me and I could see the guilt in his eyes, see the way it was eating at him. "But it's my fault. It's my fault we're no longer alike. We have to be alike, Fred, we have to be."

I looked away. "I know."

"And it's my fault."

"No," I said quietly, "it's not. George, remember when you burned your hand on the stove when we were seven and it made that scar on your hand? Remember what I did?"

"You burned your hand so the scar looked the same," he said slowly.

"And when I got that gash on my chest from that broken Bludger?"

"I gave myself one too."

"Exactly."

George gazed at some point in space, thinking. Then slowly he turned and stared at me, realizing what I meant. "We've always stayed identical…"

"...because we've always made ourselves so."

Our eyes met and locked, our identical blue eyes that the light glances from exactly the same. I stared at the hole on the side of his head, and he stared at the perfect ear on mine. Then I slowly reached up and once again traced the scar where a week ago his had perched, memorizing exactly how it looked and felt.

His eyes met mine again, determined. Then with a steady hand I raised my wand and set it on my left earlobe, the spell on the tip of my tongue. My other hand reached out to clasp my twin's.

He smiled a little, and I smiled back. We would always be identical.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Thank you to my betas, Nat and Caitlin! Reviews, as always, greatly appreciated.

Yes, this is a repost of a fic I wrote back in 2007, which I had the strange honor of once being recommended by one of my school friends.

If you liked the writing of this story, this style is extremely similiar to my actual novels. To find them, search "Saint Flaherty" on any major book-selling website.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review, or check out my other fics!

-Steph

aka Greensl33ves


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